- published: 11 May 2016
- views: 7334
World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
The bodies of over 900,000 World War One soldiers were never found or identified. In an astonishing discovery, 250 of these men were recently unearthed in six unmarked mass graves in Fromelles, a tiny village in Northern France. DSP has been granted exclusive access by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to document the exhumation of these soldiers' remains and their subsequent burial in the new Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery - the first to be built for 50 years. This documentary shows the search to reveal the identities of the soldiers; using historical records and modern DNA science, the Commonwealth War Graves team will attempt to give names to the dead and offer their surviving relatives the chance to learn what happened to them.
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